have you a clue?
by thefudge is grumpy
Summary: Gambling has always been the devil's work, but many people whisper that the casino itself must have emerged from the mouth of hell. Klonnie. (written for Gothic Klonnie 2k19, day 3: casino)


_A/N: this is a weird little hybrid of Angela Carter + Pied Piper + Tolstoy in America, but you know, tis the season! (written for Gothic Klonnie 2k19, day 3: casino. apologies in advance for mistakes/typos/inaccuracies regarding casinos lol, thefudge is tired, but happy to celebrate with yall again! go check out our tag on tumblr!)_

* * *

**have you a clue?**

\/

Stepping through the doors, she is struck by the whiff of smoke. The tobacco doesn't smell apple-sweet, like her father's. It's stale and musty, more wet animal. She wishes she was at home, scratching her little dog's ear, lying on the old davenport with a book in her lap, not reading, just dreaming.

But someone has to collect her brother, finally.

She sent Alaric yesterday, along with two stable boys, and none of them have returned. She wrote to Jeremy Gilbert in secret this morning, asking him to meet her at the casino and help her with her task, but he is not anywhere in the gold-leaved foyer. She will have to go farther in by herself.

Her old nurse told her that she would be mad to set foot in this "den of iniquity", but Bonnie thinks it would be worse should their father find Jamie here than herself. Rudolph has been threatening to cut Jamie off for some time now. There has even been talk of exile. Bonnie could not bear it. Risking her reputation is nothing to losing a brother, she thinks.

Clutching her cloak furtively, she steps into the labyrinth.

* * *

Gambling has always been the devil's work, but many people whisper that the casino itself must have emerged from the mouth of hell. One day there was only the empty field outside of town, dotted with failing crops, burning pyres and the ramshackle vagrant tents, and then the next, a two-storey palace of rose-colored stucco, plaster columns and onion dome, gaudy and massive, sprang from the earth fully-formed. It looked like a baroque temple of pleasure, a layered wedding cake without a bride and groom. Something continental and darkly European, but also plainly and cheaply American.

Bonnie admired the facade but knew she was not meant to go inside, not of her own free will. The casino was the men's playing ground, and the few women invited there had no good family name to keep.

It had never bothered her much until the men in her family began frequenting it. She'd always been a curious child, but she didn't think she was all that curious about what men did when left to their own devices. She was wrong.

As she walks down a gas-lit corridor in search of her brother and casts her eye on the peeling mauve wallpaper, she can't help the giddiness in her bones. She has entered a forbidden place, mysterious but also quite obvious in its intention to deprive men of their money, and though her nurse told her it would soil her garments, flesh and very spirit, she thinks she too might leave a mark on this raffish betting house. Bonnie runs her fingers against the dark wooden paneling. The wood is soft and warm, as if hot water ran through the walls. Or as if bodies were stacked together somewhere inside. Odd, she thinks. That such ugly thoughts could be summoned so quickly.

She hears faintly now a flute - yes, a flute - playing jauntily in the distance. It sounds like water pooling in the garret at home when it pours from the skies. She also hears the chink of glasses, the click clack of chips, and the murmur of voices, all politely subdued. No man shouts, no man ribalds. They play at serious games here. Bonnie knows she has arrived.

* * *

At first he thinks his nose mistakes him.

The last time a girl walked into his establishment he ate her with oysters. She was a beggar child, dying of some consumptive ailment or other. She wanted a place to die, it was plain to see. He leeched the life force out of her gently, shucking the shells and licking his fingers.

First, she had to play a round, of course. They all do.

This one is not much older. He can smell the innocence on her like a cold winter morning. The kind where you don't wish to leave your bed. Yes, she smells of the harsh cleanliness of snow (she must have driven through it to get here) but also the comfort of warm bed sheets.

As she steps into the card room she slowly lets her hood slip down. Her eyes try to grasp everything fast, hungry for novelty.

He lowers his own eyes to his cards. She is lovely, deeply so, but he mustn't make himself look keen. In fact, she must not notice him, at first.

* * *

They are all here, hunched over the card tables, shoulders strained, heads hung low, only the back of their necks visible. Jamie, Alaric, Jeremy. A dozen other men and servants, all familiar to her in some way or other.

The smoke curls around the musty suits and waistcoats they have been wearing for days without changing. None of them looks up as she walks across the room, not even her family. She calls out to them softly, but it's as if they've got cotton in their ears. It's not just their ears, though. Every man's complexion is yellowed by fever. They are gripped by a mania that goes beyond the thrill of gambling. They watch the shuffle of cards and chips on the green brocade like staring at the inner workings of the universe.

She looks in vain for the flute player. There is a semblance of a stage - an elevated platform, really - next to the bar, but the band is missing. Still, she could have sworn she heard playing. She even hears an echo of it now. But there is only the tense silence of winning and losing, the muttering of men talking to themselves.

She notices women too, finally, sitting in high-backed chairs against the walls. All of them are in some state of undress, but queerly, they have more clothes on than she expected. There is only the hint of disarray, one shawl draped lazily over one bare shoulder, one stocking rolled down to the knee. The rest is buttoned up. Bonnie supposes none of the men have the time or the disposition to be distracted. The women therefore sit, fanning themselves, and smile silently, unoccupied.

Bonnie studies them. She always flocks to the girls at gatherings and parties, because she's more comfortable with her own sex, but not here, not now. The women look at her in the same way they look at the men. Like she is succulent prey.

Bonnie turns her head away.

She starts walking towards Jaime's table when one of the croupiers dressed in red velvet suddenly intercedes her.

"We have a seat for you already, Miss."

He draws up a chair at an adjacent table, close enough to her brother, but far enough that she can't reach him.

Bonnie smiles nervously. "Thank you, but I want to sit next to my brother."

"I'm afraid that's not possible while the game is still going, Miss. But the game hasn't started at your table yet." His gloved finger points to her seat again.

Bonnie finally looks at the table. A spatter of familiar faces, bloviated by too much wine and playing. There's one man she hasn't seen before. He's dressed to the nines in a fresh frock that does not look slept in. There are no dark circles under his eyes. It's as if he's just come down from an important dinner party. He's got a cigar in his mouth, and he's smiling with half his mouth. He looks to her like a man on the go. As if he'll leave at any moment and he's only stopping by.

The fact that he is an outlier makes her wonder if he could be an ally.

Here's one man that doesn't take this so seriously. He's the only one smiling, at least.

What did her grandmother used to say? Smiles are always a little deceptive, even when one is blissfully happy. It's not natural to stretch your mouth. It's not really in our nature.

Bonnie realizes she can't stand there forever. She unclenches her jaw and goes to sit down in her seat.

The croupier starts to deal the cards.

"Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the next round."

Bonnie clears her throat and opens her little bag.

"Excuse me. I'm afraid I won't be playing. I'd like to pay for whatever my brother and my men owe you. I have a sizable sum here, but if you require more, you can write my father, Rudolph Bennett. He would be happy to pay, but he needs his son and servants home."

She has practiced the speech on the way here. All things considered, her voice didn't shake one bit. She's even smiling, as if she's certain they'll understand.

The croupier looks at her blandly. He blinks, like a fish underwater.

Bonnie wonders if she should say her piece again, if she should add more weight to it. Her nurse often mocks her for putting on her "lady" voice in public.

The croupier does something strange just then. His eyes slide to the smiling man across from him. The one puffing on the cigar. The smell reminds Bonnie she's not home, not in her father's study, not safe.

She's startled when the strange man begins to speak.

"There's no need for that, Miss Bennett. I would not take money from a young lady. Besides, I doubt you or your father have enough to cover the debt."

He sounds friendly, even charming. His foreign accent only enhances the charm. You might even ignore what he's saying.

Bonnie straightens her back. "I assure you we can afford whichever price you name."

"Whichever price?" he echoes, smile curling like smoke.

She lowers her eyes. "Well...yes."

"I'd be careful with such blanket statements, Miss Bennett."

"I don't know what you're insinuating."

"Nothing untoward." Suddenly he leans forward, shifting his entire body in her direction, and she's forced to look up. His eyes bore into hers hypnotically. "But you must play at least one game. I insist."

Bonnie hears it then, faintly. Flute-playing.

She looks around her, disoriented. There is only the shuffle of chips, the murmur of enfeebled men. Where is the music coming from?

She turns back to the mysterious man, looks over his gaunt, expressive features. Almost - almost musical. Why, what a funny notion. The music can't very well come from him.

She opens her mouth and she says the words before she can quite agree to them. "All right. One game."

* * *

Bonnie likes to think she's not a complete innocent. She may have been sheltered for most of her early life, but her brother made sure she understood the essentials of whist and poker (even if Rudolph strictly forbade it), because sometimes Jaime needed a partner in crime. And what else is one to do in a small provincial town? Even so, Bonnie looks at her cards askance. This isn't whist or poker. It's not bridge or gin rummy or blackjack. It's not any game she might recognize. For one thing, the figures on the cards are not the old-fashioned clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades. Or they are, but they're different..._altered_ somehow. The hearts seem to bleed down the length of the card, depending on how you hold them, the diamonds shimmer, almost blindingly, the clubs multiply into little petals of six or nine before your eyes, and the spades turn upside down, disappear, reappear, regenerate. She blinks, brings them closer to her face. It must be a trick of the light. Or perhaps a newfangled mechanism made in a factory up north. Yet it does not look like natural science to her. She's got one black diamond Queen. Nothing ought to be wrong with her, but the woman's face is not white, but creamy dark. In fact, the more Bonnie stares at her, the more the woman looks eerily familiar, like a distant cousin...perhaps even an aunt or a grandmother. The features become her own family ghosts. Mirrors.

She reaches out with a trembling hand for the goblet of wine at her side. She shouldn't drink, ought to keep her wits about her, but she needs something to fortify her.

She puts down the cards on the table and picks up the wine. The rest of the men are studying their cards as if the shimmering, melting, mutating figures made any sense. As if it were all business as usual. Can they not see it's madness?

The smiling man is watching her.

"It's good vintage," he says, gaze lingering on the ruby wine in the goblet. "1760 to be precise, five years before your glorious revolution. Please tell me if you like it."

Bonnie runs her finger down the side of the goblet. "My father says it wasn't very glorious." That's something she should not say except behind closed doors. She changes tack. "May I ask for your name?"

"My name."

"You know mine," she argues.

"Ah, we all know different things."

Bonnie chews the inside of her cheek. "I don't suppose you are from around these parts."

He grins. "What gave it away?"

Bonnie chews harder, to prevent a smile. It's not just his foreign accent. There's something exotic about him, something mountainous, Nordic yet Oceanic too. She thinks of the colorful atlases in her father's study, the ones she's not allowed to touch without him in the room.

"My name is Niklaus," he says suddenly, raising his own goblet. "But few call me so. I go simply by Klaus to my patrons. I find it more amenable. People do not like long names, do they?"

Bonnie considers the information carefully.

"Or - or Nik."

He stares at her sharply, eyes cold.

"You could go by Nik," she says, looking down at the cards. "It's shorter."

Klaus runs his forefinger over the polished wood. "No. I don't think so."

Bonnie feels hot under the collar. She shifts in her seat. She must go on speaking or she'll lose heart. "No, I...I suppose I wouldn't like to be called "_Bon_" either. We have a few French cousins. They already make fun of me as it is. Good little girl and all that."

Klaus frowns, cocks his head to the side. No one's ever spoken to him quite so personably, and personally. They're often too busy frittering away their money.

Bonnie raises her hand to her face, hopes her cheeks aren't warm. She must sound very daft. "I apologize. I will call you Klaus, if you wish. It just - it reminds me of something."

"What? What does it remind you of?" he asks, suddenly curious to know. He's rarely in the dark.

Bonnie blushes. "I - well, it's silly."

"Go on."

"I think of Father Christmas."

"Father Christmas?"

"Santa Claus, you know."

Klaus chuckles. In fact, he laughs. It surprises him, how delighted he is. It's like hearing a name from another world. There's a soft smile on his lips, genuine. "Do I look like Father Christmas?"

Bonnie half-smiles. "No, I guess not."

"Tell me, do you still believe in him?"

Bonnie coughs, looks down at her cards. "Of c-course not. I'm too old for that. Also, he is not real."

"Is anything?" he teases, picking up his knife to cut the stub in his cigar.

Bonnie doesn't have time to respond. The other players are getting impatient. The game begins.

* * *

_We are very strange creatures, my girl,_ her blessed grandmother used to say. _We have no rhyme or reason. You children know it better. You ask so many questions because nothing we grown-ups do makes a lick of sense. And you'll waste your whole life trying to put the pieces together. The truth is, you won't ever understand people, not if you try to apply logic or reason. There's an art to it, a different kind of knowledge. Have you any clue?_

Little Bonnie shook her head, but she was eager to find out what that was.

_Oh, you want to know? Are you ready to learn it?_

Bonnie thinks as she stares at the cards.

Her grandmother's voice murmurs in her ear like the shadow of a flute.

Yes, there is one art, even though it was banished from the house with her death. The flute seems to grow louder as she thinks of the word itself, the forbidden word.

Bonnie knows the music isn't only in her head.

The shifting figures wink at her like an unspoken, shimmering challenge. Her commensals throw the cards on the table in a madcap fashion, hoping the landing will stick. But it invariably doesn't, because the figures alter and swerve into the unknown, and the good card becomes the wrong card, and vice versa, in a hora of chaos and misfortune. There is no way to control the cards; they act by whim, independent of people, but so much _like_ people.

"Miss Bennett?" the croupier asks when it's her turn.

Bonnie gives Klaus a wheedling look, demanding his attention.

"Has anyone ever won a game?"

He doesn't look at her as he shuffles his cards. "What do you think?"

Bonnie purses her lips. All right.

She chooses a bad card on purpose, hoping it will become something different. She puts it down.

It remains a bad card. She swallows a sigh.

_Have you any clue?_ her grandmother whispers in her ear.

Bonnie thinks._ I do. I think I do._

Klaus is the last to offer his card.

The croupier announces the master's win with delight.

Klaus raises his eyebrows in happy surprise. He draws the small heap of chips to his side of the table.

Bonnie watches the proceedings in disbelief. Is this how it will go every round?

No, he's clever.

Next round, a portly man who owns the haberdashery in town takes the pot by accidentally dropping a card he was not meant to drop. He laughs, delighted and desperate and a little deflated too, sweat pouring down his cheeks like tears. He throws himself into the game harder after that, but the third and fourth hands are won by Klaus.

Bonnie makes note of it. Most rounds he takes the pot, but every now and then a player will happen upon a small win by sheer luck. This does little to tip the scale in their favor, but the men get the feeling that the game is going somewhere. They just have to keep trying. It's clear to her, however, that the master of ceremonies is the only one really enjoying himself. The only one truly winning.

She does not win a single hand.

_Not yet_, her grandmother seems to whisper. _Watch...watch him...what does he do? Have you any clue what the art might be?_

Bonnie watches him furtively, pretending to inspect her cards. His eyes, strange and compelling, are inattentive. He doesn't really look at the cards he has in front of him. He seems to contemplate another vista, another room, always immersed in some calculation. But his hands have a strange cadence, the little fingers in their contortions, the way he caresses the very air before him. And yet, from afar, it doesn't seem like he's moving his hands at all.

_What is he doing?_

She tries to mimic his gestures, to grasp whatever he has plucked from the air. To make something out of nothing. To make -

Music, she realizes with a gasp.

The flute plays dreamily in the distance and all the pieces fall together, like a lovely mosaic. She understands now.

Bonnie lets her eyes slide out of focus as she imagines holding a flute between her fingers, raising it to her lips, and playing, breathing air into it, but she doesn't open her mouth, she swallows the notes, she lets them melt on her tongue. She tries to enter the melody, step by step.

She starts to feel sweat pouring gently like rain on a window pane down her stays, making the garments stick to her skin. She clutches her cards with trembling, dancing fingers and she hopes that the music will follow. It is the serpentine music that erects and topples these houses of cards.

And she thinks - even as she starts to feel a small pain in her chest from so much living breath poured into the flute - if it works for him, it must work for her too.

She's always been blessed with naivety, which is another name for fortitude in the face of great, unknowable odds.

Suddenly, the cards' melding and shifting and shimmering and twinkling becomes a fiery musical sheet before her eyes, a flowering skirt of solfeggios that slips between her fingers like precious rings. She feels rich, richer than a sultan. An imaginary wealth burdens her collarbone. The cards pour out of her hands differently, she doesn't even look at them anymore, she only plays the flute.

She doesn't notice the pair of eyes watching her with increasing, disbelieving, almost resentful astonishment.

His face is white, almost transparent. Her intrusion has caught him off-guard. No one, no other soul has ever laid hands on his flute. It's as if she reached across the table and snatched his music away, not all of it, but enough to feel the lack, to feel himself dispossessed. It's a strange feeling, losing control. He watches her with rapt attention, hatred and delight coiling round the braid of his immortal longing.

A beginner, a blind, fumbling sprite in the dark, yet she threatens his entire game.

He looks at those delicate hands, dark and lovely, and he thinks about cutting them, letting the blood pour into the snow, and then kissing the stumps.

He smiles.

"I must commend you, Miss Bennett. I've entertained many players in this life, but none that actually _play_."

Bonnie wipes sweat from her brow. The double meaning of the word reverberates through her, scales upon scales. "Isn't that what _you_ do? Play?"

Klaus tilts his head back. "Did you have a teacher?"

Bonnie hears her grandmother's laugh in the distance. She feels her presence at her shoulder. "In a way."

His features seem to shimmer like the cards. "Does this mean you believe in Father Christmas, after all?"

Bonnie licks the perspiration from her lips. She borrows her grandmother's words. "Magic shouldn't need believers."

The surprise he felt before flickers in his shrewd eyes. She keeps dispossessing him, bringing him up short. She is a card in his hand, shifting, altering, twinkling.

Bonnie leans forward, beads of sweat, whiter than her skin, like drops of milk falling into the opening of her corset.

She must taste sugar-sweet. He doesn't think it. He knows it.

He snaps his fingers gently, barely making a sound, and Bonnie sees movement from the corner of her eyes. Two of the pleasure girls rise from their seats behind him. They bend their heads low so he can whisper in their ear.

Bonnie feels nervous and excited as the two women leave his side, circle the table and arrive at her chair.

She can't afford to look away from Klaus, but she spies them in her vicinity.

The women remove the painted fans from their waists.

They begin fanning her, slowly, gently.

Feathers tickling the edge of her bare shoulders.

Her milky sweat cools, turns into sweet ice.

Time seems to slow.

She raises a hand to her neck, feels the delicious chill.

Klaus watches the tableau he arranged. He smiles. It won't be enough - he knows - just to look at it.

He will have her. In a way, he will have everyone, and has already had. But tonight, it is imperative that he possess her, that he recover himself _from_ her. This snowbell, this little witch.

Bonnie glances sideways at the women. "You won't distract me, if that's what you're aiming."

"Is that what I'm doing?" he says, drinking her in.

Bonnie feels seen in a way that makes her want to undress, to let him see more of her. She blushes, shocked at her own indecency. But she's come too far to back down now. "I'll win this game. And when I do, you'll have to set my family free."

The intoxicating confidence, the thrill of him witnessing her, makes her overplay her hand. She has always wanted to be a heroine in a novel. "In fact, I'll get _all_ these people out of here, eventually. And you'll be alone in your palace."

It's the last part, really, that damns her.

Klaus' eyes become hooded. "Not alone, perhaps."

Bonnie opens her mouth. The words cannot be plucked out of the air like music. She looks down at her cards quickly, fighting a shiver.

The croupier announces she has won this hand.

"Even if you win the game," he drawls, as the next round begins, "what makes you think I will release the rest?"

It seems he has done away with pretense, does not care if the other men can hear him. They do not pay attention, anyway. The charm is too strong.

Bonnie stews the question in silence. Her eyes slide to the table on her right where her brother nurses his cards to his chest. Her heart aches.

_Not alone, perhaps._

After what feels like a long time, she looks back at Klaus.

"Tell me something, Sir. Do you enjoy playing against me?"

Klaus' smile is elliptical. He finds himself admitting to the fact. "Very much, Miss Bennett."

Bonnie nods, trembling. "More than you enjoy playing against my brother or my servants?"

He pauses. "I suppose."

She nods again, trembling even more violently. "Then play me, and _only_ me. Let the others go. And I'll stay here and play until - until one of us wins for good."

He stares at her, watching her words dissolve into air.

"I don't break my promises," she adds before he can protest. "Not that you'd let me. But it's worth more, isn't it? If I stayed willingly?"

He spreads his fingers over the cards, like caressing the memory of the wolves from his childhood.

"You speak truthfully," he speaks eventually, "but you'll never win."

Bonnie licks her lips. Pretends to shrug. "Don't be so sure. But even so. Let's say I never win. All right. I stay, they go."

Klaus lowers his eyes. He feels like a young boy again, remembers a bazaar of wonders from the dawn of ages, the first time he craved and wanted something and was so close to getting it.

Brave little snowbell. She knows what she's saying, what it means. At the same time she doesn't _quite_ know. She probably thinks she _can_ win, after all.

He steeples his fingers.

It's been a long time since he indulged, since he savored a slow dinner, since made the people last. These past centuries have been about predation. No sleep, no rest, no joy. Only blind feeding, rapacious conquest.

But indulging is not the right word.

No, this is something... novel. It means drinking her slow, so slow that it will seem like devotion, like breathless love-making, taking centuries to touch her, so that when he does, by degrees, she will keen and beg for him, relinquish her dignity just for his breath on her bare skin.

He settles more comfortably in his chair and his shadow grows behind him, sprouting delicate teeth. He pictures his meal spread on the card table, her sugar-cane arms pinned above her head, heart in her throat, the pulse of it fluttering in his mouth, on his tongue, his fingers on the apex of her thighs, playing the flute, unraveling the crinoline, letting the blood glide lovingly down her leg, swallowing her cries of agony.

"All right. I believe we have a deal."

Bonnie takes one last breath of freedom as she lets her hands fall back on the table. It is an oddly easy thing to do.

Behind her, she feels the cool breeze of the fans, a soft kiss on the side her throat.

* * *

The men walk out of the casino like newborns.

The sun hurts their blue eyelids. They stumble down the country road in a weary haze.

They've been spat out. They don't seem to know each other.

It will take a while to remember their names.

Jamie Bennett rubs his hands as if they were frozen. He misses the weight of the chips. He looks back. The gambling house is a deck of cards and a strong wind will blow it away. He opens his mouth. He wants to call out to someone. He doesn't remember who.

When he finally reaches the porch and his old nurse wraps him in an embrace, he vaguely remembers a sister.

* * *

Rudolph mourns his daughter for half a year. He still holds out hope she might be alive, but it is getting increasingly difficult to believe in such miracles. One day the casino was there, the next it was an empty wreck, a ransacked palace offering no bounty, except rotten planks of wood and green flecks of gold.

There are rumors swirling in the vagrants' tents. They'd seen a dark carriage down a country road. A lovely, cursed face at the window. A beringed hand pulling her back, caressing the side of her cheek, before she was swallowed by darkness.

Years later, Jamie finds a deck of cards in his sister's room, under her pillow. Gold flecks come off it on his thumb. Precious skin. He sits on her bed with trembling hands. He can't look the Queen in the eye.

* * *

Only her grandmother knows the truth and doesn't mourn her. She can see with her ghostly eyes into people's carriages. She can see a happy witch, rolling the dice between her fingers, her life expiring slowly into her husband's mouth, his own immortal blood feeding her arteries.

He kisses the top of her head, whispers to her about finding new prey, in new cities, in new worlds. Bonnie nestles into his embrace, watching the old world go by. The tobacco smells apple-sweet, just like her father's.

The old woman smiles beyond the grave. Oh yes, the girl has mastered the art well.


End file.
